Heather Curtis
WMAL.com
WASHINGTON — (WMAL) During a special meeting Thursday, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority Board of Directors grilled transit agency officials about a number of recent safety issues, including the criminal investigation into the July 29 train derailment at the East Falls Church station.
WMATA General Manager Paul Wiedefeld briefly discussed the investigation but didn’t reveal anything new. He ordered the investigation last week after Chief Operating Officer Joe Leader and Metro Transit Police Chief Ron Pavlik told him they were getting conflicting and disturbing information from employees they interviewed after the derailment.
“We’re asking questions, and we should be getting similar answers, and we’re not,” Wiedefeld said.
When pressed by reporters Wiedefeld wouldn’t give any details about what kind of information came from those interviews. During the meeting he said he didn’t want anyone to say anything that could jeopardize the investigation.
Wiedefeld also stressed, “I don’t know what if there’s been any crime, but we’re gonna get to the root of the issues.”
Rep. Barbara Comstock, a member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, sat in on the meeting and told WMAL afterwards it’s obvious to her that the criminal investigation has to do with the fact that WMATA knew rail ties near East Falls Church were deteriorating seven years before the derailment but did nothing.
During the meeting, Chief Safety Officer Pat Lavin said there was a record from 2009 indicating the rail ties in the area were worn.
“That defect was never upgraded to reflect that it had deteriorated to either a priority 1 or a black defect which would have called for that track to be out of service, so there could have been a recorded defect in the database, but it was misclassified as a p2,” Lavin said.
Since the derailment, WMATA has created a new form that requires more information about what was observed during inspections and is hiring an outside contractor to revamp the track inspection program.
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